When should a function accept a symbol as an argument?

[clarkfitzg]

@Henrique_Becker

@clarkfitzg

For example, you want to change the behavior of foo("bar") , so you define a method that does something different for foo(:bar) .

This seems terrible confusing to new and old users alike

Absolutely! I’m just trying to imagine use cases for symbols.

@Henrique_Becker

I fail to see how Symbol s will have a significant impact on the cognitive load of new users.
…
The user will be seeing the Symbol syntax at the same time they learn what are the values that can be passed as argument to that parameter.

True, most users probably just take the syntax at face value and do not worry about it.

To really understand the call foo(:bar), one needs to understand what symbols and language objects are, and that functions can operate on them. The large number of votes for the symbol stack overflow question I originally linked to shows that many needed that thorough, lengthy explanation.

OTOH, maybe symbols are a good entry point for starting to learn about metaprogramming, so it’s good if people see them often and are comfortable with them.